


Home Renovation

by shinealightonme



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode Tag: s05e12 Safe House, Established Relationship, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-03 17:43:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19468942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinealightonme/pseuds/shinealightonme
Summary: The best cure for any ill was a rigid, meticulous schedule.





	Home Renovation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosabelle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosabelle/gifts).



Captain Raymond Holt awakened to an unfamiliar sound in the middle of the night. He sat upright and reached for the locked gun box in the bedside table where he had of late kept his service pistol, as well as a grenade that Detective Rosa Diaz had given him with a gruff explanation of "home security." He had not yet gotten around to disposing of the inappropriate gift.

And then he remembered -- Seamus Murphy was in prison, and Kevin had just that day returned home. Except Kevin was not in bed. It was as though the events of the day were nothing but a dream. That was of course impossible. Raymond's dreams were all about folding laundry, or occasionally, when his subconscious is really letting loose, ironing laundry.

The strange sound came again, more familiar to his waking ear although no less inexplicable. It almost sounded like a dog's chew toy -- but it could not be. Cheddar had too much respect for quiet hours.

He rose and moved carefully through the darkened hallways until he found the source of the noise: Kevin was sitting in an armchair, one of Cheddar's squeaky ducks in one hand and a sewing needle in the other, poised as though he were about to do field surgery on a fallen avian warrior.

"Kevin?"

Kevin looked up with a start. His face was that of a man caught doing something illicit, or at least illogical. "Raymond. I hope I did not wake you."

Since he had, Raymond did not address the concern. "What are you doing?"

Kevin held fast for a moment, then set the needle down in a pin cushion on the arm of the chair. "I couldn't sleep."

"If you're concerned about Murphy's men..."

"No, nothing of the sort. I know the matter is being handled adequately. It's just..." He sighed, a futile attempt to put off saying the inevitable. Truly the late hour must have been getting to him. "I've grown accustomed to falling asleep to the sounds of Detective Peralta mumbling in his sleep and air leaking from a deflating mattress. I thought you would find the second of those two preferable to recreate."

"That is an accurate prediction," Raymond said.

"I hadn't realized before now that we don't own anything inflatable."

"Do you want to try to procure something?" Where they would find a defective inflatable air mattress in the middle of the night, Raymond had no idea, but he felt the offer had to be made.

"No. No, I'm being ridiculous. I'll come back to bed."

"Perhaps you could listen to an audio program," Raymond suggested. Kevin had earlier in the year been persuaded against his better judgment to try a podcast intended to lull listeners to sleep with its dull, unengaging subject matter and flattened vocal affect.

"You know those rile you up," Kevin said. "I'll be fine. I just need to adjust." He tilted his head roughly ten degrees and narrowed his eyes -- the expression he always made when processing some disquieting piece of information.

Raymond likewise found it hard to process the idea that Kevin would need to adjust to being back home. This was normal. This was the place that was calibrated to fit them without their needing to adjust.

He would just have to work particularly hard to uphold that standard, that was all. The best cure for any ill was a rigid, meticulous schedule.

-

Raymond awoke again at 0615 the next morning, a decadence he allowed himself on days that he did not have to report to the precinct. That got him out the door and to the little corner bakery by 0635, to arrive back home just as Kevin would be finishing his morning ablutions.

Or so he had calculated. Instead, Kevin was in the kitchen on his return, frowning at Maureen Dowd's column in the morning's edition of the Times.

"Scones?" Kevin asked, glancing at the box in his hand. "Is there some occasion I've forgotten?"

"I know the food in the safe house was not of the highest caliber," Raymond said. "I thought I could rectify that."

"Oh, these are pity scones."

"Not at all. You earned these scones through your deprivation. Consider them an investment that has paid out. These are dividend scones."

Kevin chuckled. "Well, it is good to see that your sense of humor hasn't changed."

After breakfast Kevin checked on the roses. He did not seem relieved at Raymond's reassurance that he had had Mrs. Chartier from the horticulture society keep an eye on them in his absence. He had muttered darkly that she was not up to the task of keeping so much as a single mint plant alive. Raymond supposed the chance to toil in fertile soil was appealing after so long a stay indoors, but it did throw them rather far off his planned schedule. The timeline only grew more egregious when Kevin came back in from the garden and took a second shower. Raymond decided to scrap his plans for the early to mid-morning and iron his slacks instead, since today was already turning into a bacchanal.

Kevin emerged from the bathroom. Raymond realized what it was that had been nudging at his attention all morning.

"You aren't going to shave?"

Kevin ran a hand over his jaw, as though he were only now considering the matter.

"No," he said, "I don't think I will."

"Ah."

"You disapprove?"

"No, I merely notice."

"Peralta was not always scrupulous about determining which razor he was using before he used it," Kevin said. "I find it's put me off the idea of shaving."

That was quite off from routine, but it did at least save them a few minutes. Raymond consulted his inner clock and found they were almost on time for Cheddar's walk.

-

They started out following route number five-sigma from Cheddar's care binder, a particular favorite of Kevin's even though Raymond did not care for the vape store that they passed along the way, nor for the lackadaisical spelling on its signage. But they made it only halfway through before Kevin encouraged Cheddar to turn the wrong way down a side street, in apparent pursuit of a dimwitted pigeon, and after that diversion he opted to head for the dog park _with the duck pond_ , a decision that Raymond could find no acceptable explanation for, even before the unprecedentedly long walk exhausted Cheddar's short legs entirely.

"You have over-extended yourself, Cheddar," Raymond said, picking Cheddar up off the ground and gently rebuking him. Cheddar whuffed in displeasure. "You will just have to live with the consequences."

Kevin scratched the top of Cheddar's head. In a singsong voice that Raymond had never heard before heard from his husband, he crooned, "who is a tired wittle doggy?"

Raymond stared. He could do nothing else. His senses sought valiantly for some new information that would explain what had just happened.

Kevin's hand froze. His whole posture went stiff. The look on his face was one of chagrin.

"My apologies, Cheddar," he said, stiffly but otherwise, thankfully, in his normal voice. "It was not my intention to infringe on your dignity. I'm...not feeling quite myself today."

Raymond tried not to look at him with judgment. Cheddar made no such concession.

"Perhaps it's time to return home," Raymond said. "We can drop Cheddar off and I can drive you to the university."

"An excellent idea," Kevin said. It seemed probable that he would have declared much of anything an excellent idea, if it allowed them to move on from this disgraceful moment.

Raymond had planned on a trip to the grocery store, to get the pantry up to the appetite of two instead of one. Given their new timeline he decided it would be more prudent to stop at the corner store. He chose not to tread on Cheddar's dignity any further than they already had by asking him to be carried in a place where he was known. He left Cheddar at the entrance to the store with a firm but respectful command to stay and walked unburdened through the aisles, grabbing some skin milk and nine grain bread. He turned up his nose at the twelve grain bread beside it. Sunflower seeds? Was this the Versailles under the Sun King?

Kevin slowed and fell behind him. He came to a complete stop at the end of one aisle. Raymond turned and followed his line of sight down a row of frozen food. Even from a distance he could make out the neon cardboard and bold, sans-serif font of a frozen miniature pizza product.

Kevin shuddered and continued on to peruse the limited selection of produce.

-

Raymond had only intended to drop Kevin off at the university, but when he pulled into a loading zone, Kevin asked, "aren't you coming in?"

"I thought I would return to pick you up, say, at 1700 hours?"

"I only want to grab some materials to work on at home." When this failed to elicit a response Kevin added, "if you would rather stay in the car -- "

"No, I will proceed in," which meant Raymond had to undertake the laborious process of navigating the humanity department's parking garage, and then discreetly check the rear view mirror for any scone crumbs that might somehow have clung to him through the morning's constitutional in the hopes of embarrassing him now.

Kevin was quick to collect his materials from his office, but he slowed their escape from campus by stopping to talk with every soul that crossed their path. At one point he made _small talk_ with a pair of _undergraduate students_. It was as though he wanted to interact with as many people as possible, for no purpose other than the sake of interacting with people.

Which may very well have been his purpose. In which case Raymond couldn't object. He busied himself reading every last flier on the nearby announcement board, although it was filled with advertisements for used electronics and amateur rock music performances.

He heard someone approach and assumed they were a student, perhaps looking to pull a tab off the flyer offering proofreading services, even though the typist had laughably failed to use a serial comma.

Instead, Dean Allister appeared at Raymond's shoulder and tapped one pompous, pedantic, puffed up finger against a flier for tutoring in remedial composition.

"Raymond! So glad to see that our university's services are of use to you. Perhaps someone can help you locate a copy of Strunk and White?"

Raymond grit his teeth. There was nowhere on today's schedule for causing a scene and embarrassing Kevin, not when he was in such a good mood that he was actually smiling in the middle of a conversation with Debbie from Comparative Literature. _Debbie_ , really.

Besides, Allister was already halfway down the hall by the time Raymond thought of a comeback. He decided to save _perhaps someone can help YOU locate a copy of Stink and Blight_ for another occasion.

-

Kevin's work engrossed him once he had set himself up in the study with it, although that was not until he had undertaken a campaign to open every window in the house. Raymond used the time to catch up on some of the items in his day he had not been able to account for, an array of activities from reading the Times to penning a letter to the Times noting all of the spelling and grammatical errors he had caught. _Remedial composition_ indeed.

The house was quiet when Kevin was all the way upstairs. Raymond headed toward the linen closet to rotate the spare blankets and poked his head into the study, since he was already passing by.

Kevin looked up from his books and blinked a few times before he smiled, breaking out of his academic shell. "Hello," and then he noticed the clock. "How did it get so late? We ought to have dinner. What do you think about Pierre's?"

Raymond thought that it was a fine restaurant, to eat at once a month, which they did, on the same day every month, which wouldn't be for another two weeks and three days. "We could. If you wouldn't rather eat in."

"I find the idea of doing anything _out_ rather appealing at the moment."

"And yet, you did not want to work at the university."

Kevin peered more closely at him. "Are you offended that I wanted to work from home? I would have thought you'd had the place to yourself for long enough."

Raymond had to choose his words carefully, to avoid the reflex to speak as sharply to Kevin as Kevin had just spoken to him. "I am not harboring some secret desire to chase you out of the house."

"Then what exactly do you want, Raymond?"

"I want you to feel at home, and I cannot figure out how to make that happen. I thought you needed a routine -- and then you changed every plan I made. I thought you needed to be out in public and not cooped up in the house -- and then you returned here immediately."

"I do feel at home," Kevin said, in blatant contradiction to his own behavior of the last day, "because I am home. Any lingering strangeness will sort itself out in time. Peralta's penchant for affecting humorous voices while army-crawling along the carpet was not so traumatizing that I require a psychiatric course of treatment."

"There ought to be more that I can do," Raymond said. "I put you in that position. And what is more, I am your husband."

"Your concern is appreciated, but unnecessary. What I do need right now is just to spend time with you." Kevin's smile returned, although its character had changed, more playful than before. "And as you recall, I did drive a vehicle through a wall and then punch a man in the throat to save your life. By the standard established in Peralta's action movies, that makes _me_ the hero, and it is the hero's job to repair the situation."

"And what does that make me?" Raymond asked.

"You are the love interest, of course."

"Oh?" Raymond considered this. "I've never been a love interest before. I suppose I will have to trust your judgment on how to proceed."

"Then I say we go to dinner, and by the time we come back I am sure I will have thought of something we could do."

"Improvising?" Raymond smiled. "If you think that's worth a try," and as Kevin kissed him he decided that it was already an excellent idea.

**Author's Note:**

> If you like this fic, you can [reblog it on tumblr](https://toast-the-unknowing.tumblr.com/post/186453491720/home-renovation-shinealightonme-brooklyn).


End file.
